Black Swan Sweethearts

Having exhausted all of Mon's interesting sights on the first day of their trip we decided to finish off Ben's family visit with a trip to the local duck pond. An adventure that manages to be better than it sounds, as this particular duck pond boasts a pair of gorgeous black swans. They are simply beautiful creatures and, unusually for swans, they're also quite sweet natured - although I don't know how they'd be with us if we dared to turn up without our usual offering of stale bread.

The pond looked a bit odd as we approached and Ben offered the opinion that perhaps the whole thing had been drained, as the swans seemed to be standing up in the middle. As we got closer we realised the pond was actually quite full, but rather than the swans being the foretold second coming of Jesus, the whole pond had simply frozen, and the birds were perched somewhat bemusedly on top of the ice.

We were just as bemused as they, as although it was very cold in the beginning of January (-14° centigrade at one point, a fact Ben's sister Jo couldn't quite get her head round - "C?" she repeated incredulously, "C?!") of late the temperature has hit such heights as 3° centigrade, thus thawing the snow we had hanging around endangering unwary pedestrians for a week or so. Nevertheless, most of the pond was still iced, except for a small corner which the swans wearily made their slippery way over to, apparently in order to menace a fat looking fish that had sleepily ventured out from under the ice.

As we were feeding the black swans a large white one saw us - or rather, the bread we were touting - and started to make its tiresome and arduous journey across the ice over to where we were standing. It took the poor thing ages, and then when it finally did arrive one of the black swans made it abundantly clear that it was not at all welcome and should possibly sling its hook. It rapidly did as suggested with a rather put out demeanour, so we threw some bread at it anyway whilst doing our best to ignore the irritated stares of the black ones.

I tried for ages to get a photo of one of the swans on its own, but one of the sweetest things about them is that they're always together, and - except for the incident where one of them had to see off the unwanted attentions of the white one - they were never more than a foot away from each other.

I took loads of videos of them slipping all over the place as frankly, it was pretty funny, so for your viewing pleasure I've uploaded one of them as they trudge towards the thawed area, and another that shows the white swan midway through its ill fated journey over to see what was going on.





And for those of you who would like to have a cockroach situation update, here it is: the little bastards laid low because we had guests. Thoughtfully not forcing their presence on visitors not quite accustomed to their ambush tactics, you say? No! Do not give them more credit than they are due. They're just trying to convince people that we're making them up, so that we get no sympathy. They're cruel and unusual beasties.